Read the following summary of the story.

CHAPTER III.

We were in a garden at Mons. Young Buckley came in with his patrol from across the river. The first German I saw climbed over the garden wall. We waited till he got one leg over and then potted him. He had much equipment on and looked very surprised and fell into the garden. Then three more came over further down the wall. We shot them. They all came just like that.

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1. In "CHAPTER III" Hemingway does not explain anything. He gives the reader no reflections as to the horrors of warfare. There is in the story itself no emotion whatever except the "awfully surprised" look of the first German who was shot. But the story has the power of arousing emotion in the reader who tends to put himself either in the position of the English riflemen or, more likely, in that of the Germans climbing the wall to their deaths. The piece tends to become a metaphor for the impossible obstacles we see in nightmares.

HOW DOES HEMINGWAY ENSURE CAREFUL READING OF THE CHAPTER? Why can't you just look it through? What makes the reader read it as a slow-motion picture? Is it the wording Hemingway uses? or the pauses between every two sentences? or the choice of details? or the succession of sentences?

As you see, Hemingway does not close his eyes to violence and horror. Is his method successful? Does the absence of emotion in the text help to arouse emotion in the readers?

2. ANALYSE CHAPTER IV. In the chapter Hemingway returns to the same image of nightmare. What makes it become even more definite? Compare the structures ofthe two Chapters. Account for the slight difference of tone in Chapter IY.

CHAPTER IV

It was a frightfully hot day. We'd jammed an absolutely perfect barricade across the bridge. It was simply priceless. A big old wrought iron grating from the front of a house. Too heavy to lift and you could shoot through it and they would have to climb over it. It was absolutely topping. They tried to get over it, and we potted them from forty yards. They rushed it, and officers came out alone and

worked on it. It was an absolutely perfect obstacle. Their officers were very fine. We were frightfully put out when we heard the flank had gone, and we had to fall back.

3. The chapters preceding the stories tell us about different periods of time. What makes us believe that they should BE PLACED IN THE SEQUENCE THEY ARE GIVEN?

Read the following summary of the story.

THE END OF SOMETHING" is the end of a sort of love affair that Nick has had with a girl named Marjorie. For some reason or other, Nick is "out of sorts". He takes the girl fishing for trout, demonstrates some knowledge of fish and fishing, and finally gets the girl to leave, perhaps for good.

Chapters III and IY contain an account of events that are given by the narrator in a somewhat peculiar way. There is no direct contact with the enemy, and the people on the opposite side are presented not as real people but as ghosts whose behaviour is strange and artificial. Not a sound is heard, as in a dream. You don't even realize that you kill, and those whom you pot down fall dead on the ground. They do not even fall, they noiselessly slide down and it is funny and surprising and the expression of surprise marks the faces of those who are no more human beings. Everything is not real. But when it recurrently comes back, when it haunts you all your life, you understand that it

has become an inseparable part of your vision of life and your attitude to it. This is something that has no end though it has a beginning.

The idea of the beginning is not far-fetched because in the story "THE END OF SOMETHING" everything is as nightmarish as the events given in the Chapter. You have a feeling. You don't realize what it is. You call it "being out of sorts". You don't want to talk about it. You know that you are to perform something but you can't because it is all a dream. And it remains with you forever as a feeling, as some pangs of conscience that go on torturing, that bring new associations, an ever-present feeling of guilt. You may try to brush it off, to drink it off, but it is still there. You are out of sorts and you try to establish your contacts with the physical world and with the people who know what to do and what to want, and know how to do it.

In fact, this story is in the nature of an early lesson which may be as disturbing to a boy as violence. "THE END OF SOMETHING" is also one of the stories of which people complain that it "has no point". It is partly because what point it ` does have is subtle and slight.

WHAT IS THE POINT (= purpose) OF THE STORY?

5. The story is divided into three parts: a description of the lumber mill, the scene of fishing and the subsequent dialogue between Marjorie and Nick. It is clear that Hemingway did everything on purpose as it is clear that in the first part he gives prominence to descriptive detail, in the second - to objective narration, and in the third - to dialogue as a representative of an inner conflict.

a)WHAT IS THE ROLE OF DESCRIPTIVE DETAIL?

b)WHAT IS THE ROLE OF NARRATIVE DETTAIL?

6. In "INDIAN CAMP", when being explained things to, Nick keeps saying, "I know". But in "THE END OF SOMETHING" the reply is quite the opposite. And in both cases the result is just the same: he doesn't know, he can't account for his feelings; and in "THE END OF SOMETHING" he is ashamed of this because for the first time he has to act and he is afraid.

Nick has learned his lesson. Things can suddenly go wrong with the pleasantest of love affairs. Here is more perplexity for Nick, and the whole business makes him extremely uncomfortable. He did it, and he doesn't want to talk about it.

EXPLAIN THE ROLE OF THE DIALOGUE in bringing forward Nick's state of mind when he is deeply perplexed and has to decide for himself. How does Hemingway show the difficulties Nick has to overcome when he is encountered by the task of giving explanations to his feelings and associations?

7. The road from innocence to knowledge as it is described in the succession of Chapters looks as follows. In Chapter I the soldiers are fifty miles from the front but the image of it is still there. They smell danger and the fire in the kitchen is the symbol for it. In Chapter II the soldiers supervise the procession of people who are driven out of their homes by the horrors and injustices of war. The soldiers are not engaged in any action, but they know what war is by some results it leads to. In Chapters III and IV they come into contact with the enemy but they are separated from the enemy by a wall or by a barricade. In the first case they see the enemy when the German soldiers try to climb over the wall, but the contact is not immediate and still they have to kill & they do it.

The story "THE END OF SOMETHING" is like a chapter of a novel in that it by no means has all the meaning when taken in isolation. WHAT DO ALL THE PREVIOUS STORIES AND CHAPTERS ADD TO THE MEANING OF THE STORY? ACCOUNT FOR THE SUCCESSION of the stories as it is given by Hemingway.

HEMINGWAY. THE BATTLER. CHAPTER V. The aim of the lesson is to teach you to achieve a more profound understanding of the author's purpose by establishing associations between various details within the story and between the story itself and the chapter preceding it.

1."IN OUR TIME" is a title ironically used because it is an allusion to the prayer "Give peace in our time, O Lord...", indicating, nevertheless, that there is no peace in our time. Nick Adams is present in most of the stories as a boy who observes and learns from the stupidities and sordid violence of a succession of intimate human episodes.

REPRODUCE THE INFORMATION ADDING A FEW SENTENCES about the things Nick Adams observes and learns in this story.

2. GIVE A SUMMARY of the story. Begin with the following: "The story opens with an adolescent Nick who has left home and is out on his own for the first time..."

3. In the story, Nick comes across different kinds of violence and evil in his attempt to establish contact with people and to adjust himself to the situation he finds himself in.

GIVE THE EPISODES, and NARRATIVE OR DESCRIPTIVE DETAILS that show Nick's wandering through violence and evil of different kinds.

4. WHAT DETAILS MAKE THE BATTLER'S VIOLENT OUTBURST LESS UNPREDICTABLE than it seems at first sight?

5. READ CHAPTER V. In the chapter Hemingway returns to a number of images he used in the stories and chapters you have read. GIVE YOUR INTERPRETATION OF THE IMAGES.

CHAPTER V.

They shot the six cabinet ministers at half past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out in the rain. They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water. The other five stood very quietly against the wall. Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.

6 . EXPLAIN WHY THE AUTHOR HAS PLACED CHAPTER V BEFORE 'THE BATTLER'. Begin with: "Both in the chapter and in the story evil is shown as something inevitable, no matter how hard you try to avoid it..."

7. Hemingway presents the figure of the aggressive mutilated champion against the figure of a hospitable, tender, motherly Negro, who is too comfortable in his relationship with evil.

a) WHAT ARE THE DETAILS THAT EMPHASIZE THE AGGRESSIVENESS OF THE FIGHTER AND THE PEACEFUL NATURE OF THE BIG NEGRO?

b) IS THIS CONTRAST CREATED BY THE AUTHOR TO ACHIEVE BALANCE OR TO DISTURB AND PERPLEX? Explain.

(Both "a" and "b" are to be done together as inseparable aspects of one problem!)

8."IN OUR TIME" calls itself a book of stories but it isn't that. It is a series of successive stories from a man's life and makes a FRAGMENTARY NOVEL.

Explain why this story is preceded by "Indian Camp", "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife", "The End of Something". WHAT IS ITS ACCUMULATING EFFECT?

ERNEST HEMINGWAY. Chapter VI and “A Very Short Story”. The aim of the class is to analyze Hemingway’s vision of the process of gaining maturity.

1. The collection of stories begins with Nick’s initiation to pain and violence. It’s his way through mud and mire, from seeing corruption to becoming corrupted. In the 6^th story of the collection (“A Very Short Story”), where the time periods of the chapter and the story almost blend and where the convalescent Nick is at hospital, the process comes to its logical end: Nick is not only wounded physically but morally. This culminating blow in the spine is symbol and climax for the process that has been going on since we first met Nick; it is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disgrace.

Describe Nick’s way to degradation (from chapter to chapter, from story to story).

1. Here is a boy, an after that a man, who both in his early environment and later out on his own has been coming into contact with “life” in our time. Each of these contacts has been in some way violent, evil, or unsettling in that no ready-made answers are available. The effect of these episodes is equally apparent. They have complicated and damaged the man, who, when an ex-infantry man, is a very unwell soldier. He cannot sleep at night; when he can sleep he has nightmares. He has seen a great deal of unpleasantness, not only in the war, but up in Michigan as well; and he has been wounded by those experiences in a physical way, and –since the spine blow is both a fact and a symbol –also in a psychical way. What has happened to Nick, in short, has made me sick.

This patter is climaxed by rebellion, by two desertions which can already be dimly seen. One is of the respectable home Nick has left, and later – when the damage begun at Indian camp is epitomized with a shell fragment –he deserts the whole of organized society.

Nick’s character, too, has emerged. He is a sensitive, humorless, honest, rather passive male. He is the outdoor man, who revels in the life of the senses, loves to hunt and fish and takes pride in his knowledge of how to do such things. He is virile even as an adolescent, and very conscious of his nerve; maturity has forced a reckoning with his nerves as well. Once grown, he is a man who knows his way around, but he is superstitious too, and is developing a complex ritual whereby thinking can be stopped, the evil spirits placated and warded off.

Express your agreement or disagreement with the critic’s opinion of the Hemingway’s hero.

1. “In Our Time” calls itself a book of stories, but it isn’t that. It is a series of successive sketches from a man’s life and makes a fragmentary novel. The first scenes, by one of the big lakes in America –probably Superior –are the best; when Nick is a boy. Then came fragment of war –on the Italian front. Then a soldier back home, very late, in the little town west in Oklahoma. Then a young American and wife in postwar Europe; along sketch about an American jockey in Milan and Paris; then Nick is back again in the Lake Superior region, getting off the train in a burnt-out town, and tramping across the empty country to camp by a trout stream. Trout is the one passion life has left him –and this won’t last long.

It is a short book: and is doesn’t pretend to be about one man. But it is. It is as much as we need to know of the man’s life. The sketches are short, sharp, vivid, and most of them excellent. And these few sketches are enough to create the man and all his history: we need know no more.

Nick is s type on meets in the more wild and wooly regions of the United States. He is the remains of the lone trapper and cowboy. Nowadays he is educated, and through with everything. It is a state of conscious, accepted indifference to everything except freedom from work and the moment’s interest. Hemingway does it extremely well. Nothing matters. Everything happens. One wants to keep oneself loose. Avoid one thing only: getting connected up. Don’t get connected up. If you get held by anything, break it. don’t be held. Break it, and get away. Don’t get away with the idea of getting somewhere else. Just get away, for the sake of getting away. Beat it! “Well, boy, I guess I’ll beat it”. Ah, the pleasure in saying that!

This piece of information contains a certain impression Hemingway’s stories produced upon the critic. He gives you an idea how to convey the impression so that it becomes clear to the reader. What is your impression of the collection?

TEXT “GOING TO THE THEATRE”

1. Give the English equivalents for the following Russian words & phrases and use them in the sentences of your own.

Эстрада, эстрадный концерт, оперетта, пародия, конферансье, партер, ложа, спектакль, во время спектакля, дневной сеанс, антракт, бинокль, касса, заказать билеты по телефону, развлечение, билетёр, провести на место, аншлаг, проход, играть на сцене, игра (актёра), гардероб, сдать пальто в гардероб, смотреть передачу по телевидению, номер программы.

2. Use “auditorium” or “house” (or both) according to the meaning:

§ What do we call the part of a theatre in which the audience sits? We call it …………………..

§ When there are no tickets at the box-office we say …………………… is sold out.

§ By 7.15 …………………… was almost full.

§ Smoking is not permitted in …………………………….

§ The play has just begun & the whisper in the half-lit ……………………. has not died out.

§ This play inevitably draws full ……………………….

§ He hurried upstairs towards ……………………….

§ The curtain fell & ………………………… went wild.

§ Which are the best seats in ………………………..?

§ The actor failed to make himself heard in every part of ………………………….

3. Use “play” or “performance” according to the meaning:

· We managed to get seats just on the day of …………………………..

· “The Three Sisters” is my favourite ………………………. by Chekhov.

· I got two stalls a quarter of an hour before ……………………… began.

· He offered me two seats for the first …………………….. of ……………………..

· Although we had to wait almost 20 minutes for the bus, we were not late for …………………...

· At what time do ……………………. start at the circus?

· A matinee is ……………………. given in the afternoon.

· Spectators are not allowed to stand in the aisle during ……………………….

4. Translate the Russian words into English & insert them in the sentences below as required:

¨ The bell rang & (зрители) went back to their (места).

¨ They were sitting in (партер) almost directly below us.

¨ We could get a very god view of (сцена) from our (места).

¨ I’m an actress, and the job of an actress is (играть на сцене).

¨ She was critical of her (игра) & wished that she could play certain scenes over again.

¨ When we arrived at the theatre we saw (аншлаг) posted over (касса).

¨ This is the best scene in (акт) One.

¨ Englishmen often call (галерея) in a theatre “the gods”.

¨ He took up his (бинокль) for a long round (зал).

¨ I had my seat just off (проход).

¨ No one knew what the next (номер программы) was.

¨ When I go to the Bolshoi I like to have my seat in (бельэтаж).

¨ We (купили) our seats at the box-office of the theatre.

¨ He always plays (драматические) roles.

¨ (пародия) was the item on the programme I liked best.

¨ The success of (эстрадный концерт) depends largely on the resourcefulness of (конферансье).

¨ I remember the scene well; it used (приводить зрителей в восторг).

¨ When does the (театральный) season begin in Moscow?

¨ What do you think of (игра актёров)?

¨ Her fine sense of style in (игра) astonished the audience last night.

5. Paraphrase the italicized words & phrases finding substitutes in the text:

Ø We might go & see “Uncle Vanya” tomorrow if you can get tickets.

Ø I prefer evening shows to afternoon ones.

Ø They’re giving “Anna Karenina” tonight.

Ø When this play is on, the house is always full.

Ø We reserved our seats beforehand at the booking office.

Ø Shows begin at half past seven & go on for three hours or more.

Ø All the seats were sold out.

Ø This kind of entertainment is known as variety.

Ø Shakespeare & other classics are played at Old Vic & the Phoenix.

Ø At what time did the show end?

Ø The theatre was packed.

Ø Are you fond of musical comedy?

Ø Seat 22 is just off the aisle.

Ø The house went wild when the clown did his act.

Ø He played the part with great naturalness.

MORE VOCABULARY FOR THE TOPIC “THEATRE”

v The ballet to see the performance

v The marble foyer at the counter

v The overture the troupe

v A well-run theatre permanent company of a theatre

v Furnishings to appear in apart

v Facings a playwright

v Tier to be billed for (e.g. December,10)

v Entr’acte matinee

v Buffet amateur

v To rattle off variety show

v The opera season is in full swing

v To phone for seats opera-glasses

v To tune up the instruments wind/ string-instruments

v The conductor to make one’s entry

v To get a lot of applause a baton

v To encore air (ария)

v To suffer from stage-fright the prompter

v Dress-rehearsal the first night of a play

SUPPLEMENT (to be done in writing before the lesson)

Put each of the following words or phrases in its place in the passage below.

Reviews/ performances/ audience/ rehearsals/ run/ flop/ director/ theatergoers/ first night/ auditions/ hit/ cast/ critics/ playwright/ matinees/ applause / parts / pieces

PRODUCING A PLAY

The person who directs the preparation of a play is the…………………………… (1). Sometimes the ……………………………..(2), who wrote the play, works with him. One of the first things to be done is to choose the…………………………… (3), the actors and ac­tresses. For this purpose, …………………………(4) are held at which actors perform short …………………………….(5) and the most suitable are chosen for the …………………………..(6) in the play. Before the play is performed in front of an……………………….. (7) of hundreds of ……………………….(8), of course there are a lot of ………………………(9). At last, the ……………………(10)! When the curtain goes down at the end, will there be enthusiastic ………………………(11) or si­lence? Will the newspaper ……………………..(12) be good or bad? What will the……………………………. (13) think? Everyone hopes for a ……………………………(14) that will …………………………..(15) for months or even years, but the play might be a …………………………(16) and only last a few days. It's hard work in the theatre. There are evening ……………………….(17) six nights a week and afternoon shows, called ……………………………(18), once or twice as well.

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